Hi

Nice review, thanks.

On page 2 is says, for the WD30EZRS (HD Tune 4.6 Sequential Read Results):

Min read 103.2 MB/s
Max read 130.5 MB/s
Avg read 60.9 MB/s

Avg must be wrong, it can't be below minimum . Perhaps you have switched the values for min and avg?

Since formatting loses, should one buy a 2.5tb hd which then formats to 2.19tb which is bootable?

Bought a 00MVWB0 WD20EARS drives just a couple of months ago and I concur it is by far the quietest drive in my setup....the first one presented unrecoverable sectors within the first 24hours, but the replacement is hanging in strong...

According to WD, the limit is 2.19 TB (2,199,023,255,552 bytes), which means that the actual limit in Windows is
2,199,023,255,552 / (1024^3) = 2048 GB, while a 2 TB drive gives you 1862 GB, so you'll only get 185 GB more. (someone correct me if I'm wrong here)

Consider some other things:

- Do you really want/need a 2.19 TB boot drive?
- If you don't, and if you use Vista or W7, the drive will give you full storage capacity anyway together with the included SATA controller.
- If you use XP you're going to pay quite a price premium for that extra ~185 GB you'll get, a 2.5 TB costs about twice as much as the 2 TB.

Buying a 2 TB drive together with a SSD is a better choice, IMO.

Ug, I hate the confusion caused by drive makers reporting size in decimal while PCs report size in binary. The issue being a 2TB limit but because drive makers report in decimal, it seems like it's a 2.19TB issue. Which seems like an odd barrier until someone points this out.

And is WD still using "intellipower" instead of just saying it's a 5400rpm drive? I can see why they did that when they originally started their Green line since 5400rpm drives had a bad rep as being slow. But it seems that people understand now that for large data storage of media, 5400rpm drives perform just fine.

Sometimes marketing stuff just annoys the crap out of me.

I hear ya, but in a way it makes sense. Given that HDD makers use the larger number everywhere, it would be confusing if they suddenly used the actual usable size in Windows instead.

What confuses me is that SPCR's review talks about 2.19 TB being seen in Windows, and that makes me wonder if I'm all wrong..


MikeC: Did you really see 2.19 TB in Windows?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the WD EADS 2 TB have a vibration level at 7? In the comparison chart the HD has a vibration level at 9.

My error; corrected.

The actual spec is 14.5 seconds not 14.5 milliseconds.

Average access time an average of tests measuring Command Overhead Time + Seek Time + Settle Time + Latency.

Whereas average ready time is referring to the The time from when the power is applied until the drive is ready to supply data to a requester. I'm assuming this would also be relevant to the time from full sleep/head parked mode to a read/write request being executed. I suppose you could say that this includes average access time so it would be

Spin-Up Time + Command Overhead Time + Seek Time + Settle Time + Latency (hopefully I didn't leave anything out)

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=60826 is a post where I quoted several drive ready times I'll quote a subset here



Rule of thumb I use is that higher RPM drives spin up quicker (as they aren't as worried about power), drives with less platters spin up quicker (again power but this time power/mass).

Thanks for the insights, dhanson865.

You are welcome but I should be thanking you more. This site has given me a wealth of data to peruse that I wouldn't have if you and your fellow reviewers didn't spend so much effort.

Great review - many thanks! FYI, I believe the interface on these drives is SATA 2 (3 GB/s) rather than what is recorded on the initial spec table.

You're welcome.... and I have to say WD's data is not a paradigm of consistency. I have a PDF doc on the entire Green line that states 6 GB/s -- but I see on the WDE site not, the spec is given as 3. No consequence either way, as performance of these drives is not at all bottlenecked by either SATA interface, even in extreme RAID or whatever.

Yes, and it isn't just WD, other drive manufacturers are often just as likely to have missing specs, incorrect specs, specs that are correct but you aren't sure how they measured them, etcetera.

It is funny to note just as 6Gb/s is becoming an issue for SSDs, HDs are finally breaking into speeds that break the 1.5 Gb/s barrier. It's only the cache on modern hard drives that give them any benefit from having 3Gb/s or even 6Gb/s interfaces.

Anyone happen to know if there is a reliable (and easy) way to determine if a WD20EARS has three platters or four? E.g. via firmware revision or serial number or something along those lines? I'm just curious, as I bought six of these drives about a month ago. The article suggested the informal test of looking at the case, to see if it's more deeply recessed than other drives... but I'm hoping for a more precise method.

Do you drives have the codes

WD20EARS-00S8B1 (4 platter)
WD20EARS-00J2GB0 (4 platter)

or is it

WD20EARS-00MVWB0 (3 platter)

or do you have another revision?

FYI, the sample 3tb Green is up for sale - $180 incld. shipping in US/CA.

I have 1, 4, and 1 of those model numbers, respectively. So looks like I have only one 3-platter.

I have the 00S8B1 in front of me now, with a manufacture date of Sep 20, 2010. (The others are "live" in a system right now, so I can't pull them to see their date.)

That's interesting, though. Thanks for the info!

No sound recordings this time?

Someone actually noticed and commented?!

I was pressed for time and decided to go live w/o them, partly as an experiment to see how many people actually listened to or used the recordings. I don't have a way to track the # of times sound files are accessed.

Truth is that the differences among these 3 drives is fairly subtle. You can hear it when seated within a foot or 2 in a quiet room, but none could be said to be noisy -- they are all extremely quiet. For now, go back to some of the other WD Green reviews for previous recordings, and imagine the 3-platter 2 TB is 1-2 dBA quieter (from a meter away).

It is a 2.19TB issue. It's a 2TiB issue.

When will people get their heads around this..

fwiw I have listened to the audio recordings on only two reviews and I don't remember which two. It just never seemed that helpful to me given the need to figure out where to set all my volume controls and of course it was worse back when I did it as your noise floor was higher. I'm guessing the new recordings have less background noise and obviously the new chamber gives you a lower sound floor.

Personally I'd only want audio recordings for a few reference samples and really odd outliers where words don't make it clear what the sound issue is. 90+ percent of the time I don't care about the specifics of the noise, just a subjective good, bad, or mediocre is enough.

Sound recordings are interesting at around 18dB and higher, that's when I listen to them. Below that, there is a good chance that the noise doesn't really matter since it'll be below the ambient noise most of the time.

Would someone notice the difference in vibration in everyday use using a Samsung F4 2TB over a WD Green 2TB?

Sound recordings is one of the things which makes reviews on spcr so unique. I don't know any other site around the web where I can actually listen reviewed hdd and compare to my own in terms of noise. Actually this is not hypotetical example, for now my only hdd in fanless setup is wd6400aaks (reviewed time ago), which still clearly heared by me, even packed in tuniq sanctum hdd silencing box. So, thanks to spcr, I can download sound recording for my drive and compare it to the others. And even drives which close to each other on measured dbs could make completely different noise. For example, I don't like seeking noise from samsung ecogreen, which could be strong candidate.

So please continue to record sound, this is maybe the greatest thing ever happened in reviews.

+1

This is too subjective a question to be useful, imo. Depends on.... just about everything including the mood of the listener. It can be clearly felt by me and I can hear the different effect they have in a chassis. But in normal casual use w/o the other there as an immediate comparison... no I would not "notice" the difference; w/o the other to compare, there would be no difference to hear.

Let's just say both drives are very quiet; the WD is a touch quieter.

Thanks for the review, Mike. Also thanks to dhanson865 for chiming in on ready time. I think this should be of some concern to those using a green series drive as their sole storage device, as the long ready times can cause BSODs when waking up from sleep. I used to have this problem every now and then on my WD15EADS, and had to apply a hotfix from MS (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977178) to make Windows wait a lot longer for the drive to become ready before panicking/shitting the bed. Still, the fact that WD no longer publishes this spec makes me think that this is because it is an area where they are getting worse (but the plus side being lower power requirements), and kudos to Mike for taking notice.

Out of curiosity, what are the peak power draws from drives s/a these during spin-up?

Wow, I haven't ever seen a stop error for a SATA drive exceeding the 10 second limit. I didn't even know the spec called for a 10 second limit. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977178 is an eye opener.



Poor wording to assume that only "large" drives could exceed the limit. Many drives, no matter the capacity, have rated ready times in the 11+ second range.

here is a comparison from WD specs for the three 640GB models from 2008



Black = WD6401AALS
Blue = WD6400AAKS
Green = WD6400AACS[/quote]

I don't consider any of these three drives to be "large" or unusually slow so when you see even the fastest of the three is rated for 11 second ready time and MSFT is saying the spec is 10 seconds or less. By small they must mean <200GB drives from 5 years ago?

spinup power isn't excessive it's usually within a watt or two of the R/W power.